More gold band weaving.

Well, what do you do once you have made a box loom? Try it out, of course. So I've been test-weaving some more, again with silk and gold... and by now, it's become a fairly long band:


...so long that I have wound it up and tied it together with the white cord. (That band will probably show up in my online shop, eventually.)

The boxloom, of course, has also evolved a bit during all this weaving:


My original plan to make a sort of reel from acrylic has not stood the test of time - or rather, the glue I used was not strong enough. So the construction (you can see the leftover parts behind the loom, half-hidden by the sandpaper to smooth out any remaining catchy edges) got replaced by a cardboard tube. To keep the warp from unreeling, I have a suitable gear and stopdog, but haven't taken time to install them yet (they are on the far side in the photo), so for now, a clamp is taking on the stopping duty for the warp reel. (I love those clamps. We have a gazillion of them, and they are just. so. handy.) There's an old iron providing the heft that the lightweight materials do not give, so I can beat in the weft without beating the loom towards me.

It always fascinates me to see how tools, and even those that seem so simple, have a lot of details that turn out to be more important, or less important, than you would have supposed them to be - even if you know the textile technique in question, and how those tools get changed and evolve when you work with them...